Shindaheen

Shindaheen

G. F. Skipworth

ROSSLARE PRESS ♦ ROSSLARE ARTS INTERNATIONAL

PORTLAND, OREGON

Copyright©2009, by G.F. Skipworth, Rosslare Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles, reports and reviews. For information, address Rosslare Press, 7660 SW Oleson Rd., Portland, Oregon 97223.

Revised First Edition 2009

Visit the Rosslare Press website at: www.rosslarebooks.com

ISBN-13: 978-0-9824710-0-5. ISBN-10: 0-9824710-0-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009905382

Acknowledgements and Dedications:

To my family and friends, who threatened to disown me entirely if I continued to embarrass them in this way…which, as you can see, I have proceeded to do.

To the science faculty of the Karapin Institute of Technology who, after months of ardent research, have rendered the work’s ‘physics’ airtight and utterly above reproach.

To the Library of the Central Worlds, which moved the opus out of the ‘Self-Help’ section, and recatalogued it under ‘International Affairs and Military Science,’ where it should have been all along.

And, finally, to Tyrfel Vintgassen, maintenance engineer of the Cooperstown Mental Hospital’s third floor...who really wrote the story, and who loves Banjeel so much that he can barely stand it.

Warning:

Your galactic neighbors, apparently, understand that which you do not: that creation through imagination is more than a matter of semantics and can be, in fact, deadly dangerous. If you think it, somewhere out there, it happens. And so, whea pod of three-legged Latchamites kidnaps your Aunt Hortense from the lawns of Cottlesby during high tea, don’t come crying to us. We are months behind on such clean-ups already. Practice responsible creativity!

You might enjoy looking up some of the terms found in this story

Eagle Cap, the Wallowa Mountains, Neskowin and Waiilatpu

The Doppler Effect

Holograms

The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy

Orpheus

The Medicis

Snow owls and bobolinks

Music theory, intervals and the Mozart Sonatinas-the Klavier

Ave Verum Corpus – choral music

Gilbert & Sullivan operettas

Austrian dirndls

Historical linguistics and lexicons

Banshees

Valykries and Wagner’s music dramas

Muhammad Ali v. George Foreman

Donald O’Connor

1948 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith

Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance

Botany – Indian paint brush

Chant

Billiards and Minnesota Fats

Episodes

The Fable of the Shindaheen

Gray, 93 Years of Age

Attack of the Gram

Karapin

The Queen of Carpailti

Gray at 58 – the Wallowas

The Littlest Valkyrie

Fall of the Chadishar

The Gauntlet

Out of Eden

Incident at Waiilatpu

Living the Dream

Reconciliation

Love and War in the Wallowas

On the Necessity of War

To Train a Shindahee

The Legend of the Terkkhan

The Gaiunt Werrayour ofe Thae Terkkhan

A Brother’s Answer

The Tribes Gather

Binté

The Great War of Carpailti

Mixi

Vilia’s Inferno

Chanters

Kota

Kaliss

Shakespeare and the Lords of Gan

The Terkkhan

Epilogue

The Fable of the Shindaheen

(as first I heard it recounted at the Carpailtin campfire)

And so, in time, the four became the one. The aged and the young, the prudent and the impulsive, the worldly-wise and the untested, all melded into the perfect champion, our perfect delegate. The ultimate artisan of reason and war went before us to face, willingly, that which we could not face alone, could not

understand by any measure known to us, and could not even name, so strange were its ways. The ancient scrolls of Peter the Prophet, given to him by the Great Madonna of Carpailti herself, had made her coming clear…She is the tigress in your dark, the phantom at your vision’s edge and the whirlwind that takes your warriors. The armies will come, not for one another, not for flags or gold, but for her. All Carpailti seeks her, and on Jenkaat is she to be found. Should she fall, go to your homes, close the portals, put life away…and weep.

That certainly is high-flown language, I must admit. I further suspect that it’s not a very good start for the uninitiated. But, as luck would have it, I have brought the opening lines of my journals from that time. It should help you to see the way it was. You know, I was not always this young. This was written, for example

when I was almost one hundred of your years, but today, I thought it more prudent to appear as a somewhat younger person, since there is much to remember in the telling of this tale, and I would be most sorry to miss a moment of it.

****

Gray (93 years of age), August 10, 2088 –Wallowa, Oregon

Everywhere, in almost every world, eager children are visiting their grandparents. In America, the image evoked is that of diminutive, rotund people who live over the river and through the woods, waiting

on the porch with assorted pies, home movies and nostalgic stories. Human men and women revere this association. It is a haven from jobs, school and an assortment of other odious daily labors. The allure of this brief period of tranquility rejuvenates them to begin anew the generally pointless rituals that suffice for life’s meaning.

We, too, revere the observance. Indeed, our grandchildren, whom we do not yet remember, arrive tomorrow evening, but not to pie or home movies. They are coming to work, to prepare. They come to undergo what we call a conversation, of which most people are utterly incapable. The four of us will form, over a fairly brief duration of time, a physical and mental synchronicity upon which we can place our lives, under any duress. We will test the limits of their young temperaments, expose their superficial assumptions and push them to high degrees of thought and action that have never existed for them. They, in turn, will question our most revered procedures and ferret out flaws in what we have always taken to be our ancient perfections…flaws that only fresh innovation can reach. Finally, they will tax our aged arms, lungs and patience, for indeed, we will choose an advanced age from which to teach them. Each age bears its own advantage, of course, and all of them must be understood and absorbed by the participants. We need each other. All must be brought to excellence. The four must meld their highest gifts into one of our number for, ultimately, that one will stand with us against a threat of which we have little or no understanding, and for which we can offer no explanation. We only know that it is coming.

No one amongst us knows precisely how long we have been here. We do not remember anything of our birthplace. No matter…it couldn’t be pronounced anyway, any more than could our names. That being the case, I have borrowed the simple name of Gray. It is…aristocratic, and thoroughly British. People have always seemed to respond positively to it. There are a few of us scattered here and there, and while we don’t always know the precise locations, we remain in contact, and keep a general awareness of each other. We gather, from time to time, under unusual circumstances, through some unspoken, mutually expressed consensus. It is theorized that we have a life span, but none of us is absolutely sure of that theory’s veracity. As a rule, we choose to live life in both linear and…alternative fashions, selecting our ages by preference and need. And so, we live some of our human passages out of order, and alternate easily between stages of life. Through this, we form relationships which can either be chronologically reversed or recalibrated in some fashion, for mutually beneficial purposes. For example, our two grandchildren could become our grandparents in another scenario. We do hope, at least, that their arrival will spark some familiarity. That is always such a comfort.

Enough of that, though. The person of whom I most want to speak is my beloved Marta (it seemed appropriate, as her name is even longer than mine). We have been together for so long, I can recall nothing else of any importance before the time of our most unorthodox…meeting. Such a meeting, though…oh, we were attending some multiple weaponry tournament in…(ach…she could give you the specific system. My choice of age these days plays havoc with my memories). I can tell you that it is very far away in terms of your exploration program, and, as for the tournament, she won it. Dear me, did she win it! No chance of forgetting that!

Marta stands out in any crowd. Even in her choice of an older age, her figure attracts considerable attention. Her hair, currently a bright white, still billows like a dueling enchantress, and her stare melts stone. In the black robes, she is imposing and, in her grey, virtually irresistible…but already, I’ve strayed off point. The point here is that in addition to being frighteningly beautiful at every age, she is the universally acknowledged champion, and the most public, of the Sisterhood of the Shindaheen. The noun form of the weapon is shortened to shindie by practitioners, of which there are few. I have hesitated, through the years, to ask why. At any rate, the shindie is a lengthy blade by human standards, saber thick with no curve, but barely heavier than air. Along the four-sided mother blade are four additional, suspended double edges, one foot in length, and held to the main shaft by a network of highly excitable bands, most akin, I suppose, to an elastic rubber. It is, however, much more responsive and firm than those earthly elements, and the blades habitually operate at considerable speeds, interacting with a variety of objects. The four secondary segments move independently of the mother blade, to four feet in any direction (toward the wielder as well, in extreme cases, where he or she dodges a returning blade in order to parry an opponent from behind.) In the face of a sudden frontal attack, by an overwhelming, heavily armed force, they can also be manipulated to lunge and recoil in rapid-fire. And so, the shindie is a weapon of five independent blades with enormous spatial liberties. Marta, however, is most comfortable with one of these marvels in each hand and so, as a ten-bladed terror, has remained unchallenged by any but the most unfortunate, deluded assailants. Mind you, she does her best to reason the poor things out of it, but some just never learn to listen. The speeds at which she moves, in either attack or evasion, makes a response too unthinkable for any rival or training partner in her experience…except, of course for me.

Whereas Marta is all the more adorable with each new wrinkle, my morning trips to the mirror have been, of late, somewhat less inspiring. Once regarded as passably handsome, I have recently spent my early waking moments looking at what I perceive to be the face of a basset hound atop the body of some prodigious fish. Marta, of course, swears that it isn’t so, but…at any rate, as with humans, the female is, more often, the superior multi-tasker, and I have no taste for the shindie. For me, two empty mother blades suffice, and I am entirely ambidextrous. In point attack, I am anything but lethargic, and am generally unrivaled in anticipation. In fact, I alone can block most everything Marta can offer (sometimes at a great strain, I admit), and she can elude my most rapid initiations (although far less easily than with her other opponents). We push each other’s gifts to a point where no one else can, and yet, even at the top of our skills, we don’t get to each other much….at least not in combat.

To say that we met at the tournament is not altogether accurate. We competed in different events, but followed the other’s progress with interest. Hailing from the same homeland, we came from opposite sides of the tracks, as it were. My people would characterize Marta as a spoiled, collegiate type…a brat (to use one of your metaphors), while hers would have assumed that I was an ordinary street thug. Neither is true, of course, but as to our meeting, the basic question of social class was irrelevant. It was more a question of self-defense and ultimate survival that was germane to the moment.

Much like your earth’s archaic dictatorships, the teams from Tenke (Tenkay) routinely enter worlds’ great competitions, in crisp solidarity, marching stiffly about like royalty, attended only by a massive, elaborately color-coded security unit that would be the envy of any potentate. They are a possessive culture, a conquering society that measures its glory in the dimensions of land mass. Chauvinistic to the core, females remain as property, and are acquirable by conquest, a concept long since buried in most of the other worlds. Male prestige is based, very often, on the art of risk-taking, and an entire lexicon of male-only words exists alongside a separate grammar for their use. As a military-based world, Tenke lives by the motto of what the earth French would call liberté du guerre, the right of one world to invade another based simply on a belief that it can succeed. No moral question is involved at all, although more pacifistic movements have begun to generate interest on the home planet.

Whatever their differences, they are enough like us so that Marta’s… charms…were fully noted as she exited the pavilion, part way down the marble stairs and into the citizens’ market. Apparently, she traced the inappropriate comment to an enormously well developed, bearded and swarthy officer, behind and to her immediate left, leaning against one of the ivory pillars at the fountain’s edge. I will never forget the feeling that time was being altered. She paused…and paused…stock still…eyes mostly closed. In slower than slow motion, she rotated her head to the left and cocked one eye slightly more open than the other, upon the offender. Sitting at the bottom of the stairs by the fountain, I looked up at him from about fifty feet, perhaps a bit more. He certainly had wonderful teeth, a dentist’s dream, in fact. He showed all of them in a wide, playful grin, accompanied by raised, leering eyebrows, that symbol of provocation seen on humanoid playgrounds across the galaxy. As my damsel in distress reflex longed to charge to the fore, I paused to ask some pertinent questions. Granted, he appeared to be very strong. No doubt the Tenkin would select only the elite for security positions. More often than not, they were former champions of tournaments such as this one. The man in question on this day was decorated far more elaborately than the others, although one had to wonder why such a luminous and pervasive yellow uniform was chosen to demonstrate strength (and the bolt-like insignias would have seemed a bit comic bookish, circa 1930, to a human observer.) Still, he was gifted, I felt certain, and was armed with the standard cardio-dart weapon familiar to most of us from past political encounters. But, had he not witnessed this event? Was he not aware of what Marta had just done to fourteen bewildered opponents, not to mention a fair chunk of Karapin’s property, by way of structural damage to the pavilion itself? In his defense, Marta was at her twenty two year best, hard to ignore. But, had he no inkling of what he was risking? For the moment, I thought, I’ll keep my seat. She may need the room (not very chivalrous, but most practical – had you been there, I believe you would have agreed). Still, no motion…the entire courtyard had picked up on the tension by now. Marta’s face was still hidden deep beneath her hood, and she continued to wait. Later, I would learn that she has an inexhaustible tolerance for some things, and none at all for others. What we were observing was a prelude to the latter, and now the crowds and teams departing the arena had joined the silent apprehension, holding their collective breaths.

I really believed that, at any second, Marta would break her freeze and walk away, but we’ll never really know about that. Our officer’s brain apparently failed to meet his high dental standards, for at that moment, he did the unthinkable. Strolling forward toward the stairs, fingers playing with the outer curls of his moustache, he repeated the insult, with a few unsavory elaborations and a coy twist of condescension. Now, you must all realize that the shindie is not a stylized practice, in which referees blow whistles, or combatants strike poses and wait for en garde to begin. There have been instances in which three people were killed simply in the drawing of the weapon. I thought for a moment that he might understand this, as he paused only a few feet away, considering Marta’s odd response. Some of the Tenke guards must have known it, as several rose in anticipation, feeling for their hip weapons with one hand and hugging the rifles with the opposite arm. This was it, no doubt about it. Hundreds of onlookers among the teams, spectators and vendors instinctively backed up a step or two, as if a western saloon brawl was about to commence. As we expected, Marta finally moved. Her head returned to its frontal gaze, slowly as before and, at the same slow speed, to the bewilderment of all…she bowed her head… and sat down. Yes, she sat down, on the third stair from the top, invisible within her hood, hands and arms folded in front. There are still surprises in life, I thought. To see such a magnificent practitioner like this in a position of total submission was both ludicrous and surreal. If it had been anyone else, one could have envisioned her shaking, pleading and weeping, shrinking deeper within her robes. But, the moment of truth had passed, and Captain Moustachio grinned again, completing his stroll to the third stair. He stood over her like a Roman gladiator of old Earth, and bent to take her left arm with a giant right hand. He raised her to her feet slowly, almost lyrically, although I am sure it was more a savoring of the victory, especially in such a public arena. No evidence of poetry was apparent in any of his other aspects, so I doubted that a search for it would bear fruit. As he turned her to face him, Marta moved forward, and, to everyone’s further astonishment, gently laid her still hidden face sideways onto his right shoulder. After what I had seen inside the pavilion, the sight was almost sickening. It is always that way when enlightenment falls to the mercy of the unconscious. The troop of guards relaxed as one body, and began to grin and laugh, imitating the encounter. Weapons returned to standby, and the crowd audibly exhaled. As she continued to lean, he squeezed his arm around her waist. For just a few moments, they looked like old lovers reuniting in a Puccini opera. For all I knew, that is precisely what they were. It must have looked that way to the crowd, at least, as many began to turn away, muttering and shuffling. Sellers came out from behind their carts and began fussing over merchandise. I looked away as well, rose and continued my grand tour of the central square…about three steps of it, that is.

In my travels as a soldier, mercenary, freedom fighter, diplomat and private citizen, I have heard the emotional gamut of utterances made by every life form within this group of worlds. Through my experience, I have become all but imperturbable. I have sat silently and watched some of the most apocalyptic events within creation, to the extent that it is known. I have stood, as others panicked, the lone calm among entire populations of hysteria…But, the shriek that electrified the air around us on that afternoon combined all the most horrifying nightmares a living being can concoct, including my own. It was a sound of impending death, pleading, of being devoured, and of infernal humiliation, all wrapped up together into one lone and pathetic hell-born exclamation. No creature, I felt certain, had ever, ever offered such a sound to the sky. I wheeled with a hand reaching for my sheath, a collapsed throat scrounging about for sound, and knees that wanted no part of whatever I had been doing a moment before. The massive Captain Moustache was standing with face frozen, as if impaled in a life-ending second of terror, hanging limply, a foot off the ground, legs searching for anything solid. It was difficult, at first, to see what was holding him there, as Marta had barely changed position, other than to raise her head. Her face was still partly hidden, and as blood erupted from her resting spot on his shoulder, we watched his titanic form fall suddenly to the ground, as the levitation was severed.

The shoulder where Marta’s head had rested was badly mangled but, more importantly, grossly incomplete as if the Captain had been attacked by one of your great white sharks. Finally, it came to me. She bit him! She bit him! The most gifted shindie artist in the universe, and she bit him! Not only that, but she held him aloft for several seconds with no hands! She had removed a hunk of his upper arm and shoulder, and had come within inches of tearing out his throat, employing no weapon, and barely moving at all. Yet, the giant was on the ground, too injured to scream a second time. Taking a few quick steps toward the stairs, I looked intently at Marta who, as before, was slowly beginning to turn. As her face reached my direction, the hood fell from her head. Even in her younger ages, her hair was a gleaming white, by choice. Her eyes were narrow, as if a great wrong had been righted. She was partly in trance, but caught me looking, and stared at me. The most beautiful smile in the universe was now a dripping, pulpy red grin, and my telepathic sense distinctly heard her pose the silent question to all who could hear…Anybody else?

All was still. Then, at the click of forty plus cardio rifles (so named for the dart’s penchant for stopping the heart), a tiny flick of the head in my direction said, Are you in? The answer was immediate, and she began vaulting like a Chinese acrobat down the stairs towards me, as I assumed my twenty two year old condition (I am less wise in this form, but can run much, much faster). I have seen such acrobats in my earth travels, but have never seen one change course at ninety degree angles in the middle of a series of handsprings, cart wheeling sideways every three or four sequences. Springing at me in this zig-zag fashion, she emitted a series of silent instructions, which I received immediately and with impeccable accuracy (although I could not swear to their purpose), but had to push the brain faster than it wanted to go, in order to respond with all the appropriate and necessary immediacy. As she reached me, I was already in motion, unsheathed, and we were caught in a whirlpool of our own making, twelve blades clanging like an out-of-tune carillon, as dozens of darts were deflected to the stone street. I could see the Captain above, gesturing and bellowing in our direction as best he could, while a mass of security agents flooded the stairs. When they alternated to the hip weapons, we realized that our window to run had opened for an instant, and so we took full advantage of it. Upsetting carts along the way, we flew as much as ran, leaping tall vegetation, monuments, dumb-struck vendors and fountains, deeper and deeper into the dense commercial district. To the sides, local law enforcement of all shapes and sizes emerged from various offices and vehicles, and we knew that the pursuit would soon reach epic numbers. They didn’t like the Tenkin either, but certainly didn’t want to incur any political incident with them. We continued running onto older streets with worn, cobbled pavement, the vendor carts growing thicker at each corner. Reaching the city wall within minutes, we began to move along the parapet, looking down at a sea of woven garments, musical instruments, pots and pans, chickens and fresh fruit. The instructions streamed to me again. They sounded strange, but this was obviously a woman upon whom one could rely. Pulling to a stop, where the road outside the parapet rises to meet the main entrance to the upper wall, we grabbed hands, took a run at the stone safety guard, and vaulted into empty space, somersaulting into the broiling activity below. Now, I am not one who typically throws himself blithely into the hands of another’s judgement, but she moved too quickly for me to argue, and was overpowering in her resolve. Several revolutions later, into the void, I wondered if this was all irrelevant, considering the odds of landing on our feet. But, that was, apparently, not the plan. Three feet from the stone floor, we were jolted into a phase of slow motion, during which we swirled our cloaks, turned them inside out and returned them to our backs. She was now in grey, and my tan had become a light green. From there, we were lowered gently into two waiting chairs which sat empty before a festive cart of various edible items. At the moment of contact, we simultaneously aged sixty three years. By the time the mob arrived, all that remained of us was a myopic, pruny little couple, adorably dimpled with diabetic little smiles, offering to passers-by the apples we had picked that morning. And that…is how I really… met Marta.

As you may, or may not know, we do use various craft for travel, but in emergencies, we just blink off and blink on…somewhere else. I apologize that the whole process isn’t more exotic – no wands, no puffs of smoke. Please remember, if you will, that I am neither a scientist, nor am I any sort of magician…more of a poet. In my artless way, I just call the process blinking, because a little human girl named it that when I tried to explain it to her. I thought that this was cute and, in my reality, cute is more important than equations. The correct term, however, for those who expect a modicum of maturity in such matters…is spanning.

Be that as it may, in honor of my little human friend, Marta and I blinked out, and reappeared atop the isolated and ravishing Eagle Cap, in the Wallowa Mountains wilderness of northeastern Oregon. There we stood, a geriatric marvel, our smiles intact and hands still clasped as one. We have been this way ever since, through some silent understanding. I, personally, have no regrets. It’s a good thing, though, that we didn’t have pie. The way Marta takes care of business, I might have thrown up.

Attack of the Gram

Lights blurred as they flew past. Tyler and Vilia stared blankly out the window. Only, there weren’t supposed to be any lights, not in this country, not on this trip. The ticking of the tracks was consistent and upbeat. Only, there weren’t supposed to be any tracks. It is certainly true that they were traveling through the Blue Mountains into the Wallowas, where the train is often the only way in, but this was a modern, airborne travel and training module, complete with work-out facilities, designed for tournament preparation. The train and lights, down to the Doppler Effect from the passing, phantom vessels, came out of Gray’s vast and unpredictable imagination…a nice touch, to be sure, but it seemed like a lot of trouble for a short trip with an important mission. All right, the man adores trains, and had sent this model to retrieve the teens in Edmonton, thinking that they might enjoy the historical setting while they prepared.

Tyler, a gangly fourteen, had just begun to sprout over the past few months. His dark eyes were of a sort that bore down on you when he listened, and he developed, long ago, a fierce capacity to concentrate. He hated to miss anything. It made him feel stupid, an absurd notion, but what we feel, we feel. He was a bit serious, not like Gray at all, but the bonds that draw us together are very seldom wrong. Remember, when speaking of our grandchildren, grandparents, or any other inter-family relationship, we are not speaking of genetic families produced through DNA, but by deeply mental empathies. We are, indeed, family members because our basic synchronicities draw us to one another. It sounds clinical, but at least it eliminates most fights over politics and religion during the holidays, and that is a blessing anywhere in the universe.

Vilia, by contrast, was an obvious match, although little importance is placed on external similarities. Still, at twelve, almost thirteen, she had Marta’s ice blue eyes, auburn hair almost as long and fair, the dimples that drive a young boy berserk, and that alpine rosiness so abundant in all of Marta’s ages. And, like Marta, she dutifully absorbed the technical, but could perform like a lyrical, flowing, liberated spirit. She was at her most present wiAth her mind elsewhere, and could, as a normal reflex, shed tension under duress. Most interesting of all, as her instructors have mentioned, the glimmer of the multi-tasking gift was already beginning to appear in her classwork, in a far more developed way than is usually seen by such an age. It was going to take some time yet before she would reach the customary maturity in which a practitioner first touches the shindie, but we all had a…hunch…well, we shall see.

Not surprisingly, they broke the silence in tandem (they are bonded to each other as well), but Vilia, as was typical, forged ahead. We could have spanned, she sighed (what Gray’s little girl called blinking). We could have gotten there in a second. Tyler screwed up his face and rolled his eyes, as older brothers love to do. We’re supposed to train for four extra days before we see them. That’s why he sent this module. Besides, they told us not to span by ourselves. You’d probably land us in the middle of…Tasmania, anyway…or worse. Vilia’s cheeks caught fire, and before completing an entire inhalation, snapped, I haven’t missed a span in almost forever! You’re the one who keeps stopping to read the manual. Last time you were leader, we came out with six people we don’t even know! Tyler started to take in one of those quick breaths that pave the way for the perfect sibling comeback, but paused at the top, relaxed his eyes, and then returned to peering out at the stars…but Vilia caught this uncharacteristic reaction, sensing that he was worried about something more pressing than subduing his mouthy sister. She looked at him for a few seconds, and he knew that she was after a complete explanation. There’s something…or someone in the flumes…they saw them twice last month, and one of the old ones was attacked last week. So, they told me we can’t span on the trip. Appearing to have just heard a ghost story, Vilia leaned in and whispered…Who, who is it…what…something? Don’t know, Tyler replied nonchalantly…Nobody does.

They returned to the window together, as silhouettes of pine, fir and spruce raced by, almost distinguishable under the full Wallowan moon. Tyler thought that might be Gray’s touch as well. At least ten mintes had gone by before he ventured, Want to go again? Vilia didn’t change her gaze from the forest. I’m so tired of the grams. They’re boring. Tyler tsked in big brother dialect. We’ve got at least forty of them, and they all have different weapons and styles. Waving a hand in the air, she dismissed the idea and half muttered, They only do one, maybe two things…they never surprise me anymore…and they’re too slow, even when we set them at the high rating. She scanned all the possibilities again for a second or two, when her eyes suddenly lit up, and her face jerked around to her brother, as if to tell him the secret of the universe. There’s one that we haven’t looked at yet…we haven’t tried the shindie program! Tyler reacted as if he had already heard this idea a number of times …"We can’t touch that for four more years, at least! Are you

crazy? It’s dangerous! Vilia jumped out of her seat, reaching over with her right hand for her training blade. No it’s not, she exhorted, trying to get him in on the plot. If you set it low enough, it just knocks you around a little when you make a mistake…dangerous…phht! The last phrase was crafted in little sister dialect, effective at melting the resistance of big brothers by disputing their manhood…and it worked. In less than a minute or two of half-hearted protestations, she had him. If he were to have been entirely truthful, he would have admitted to his curiosity, because the gram model was based on the legendary Marta, and he’d never seen her in action. Well, why not? Would a company that makes combat training models use the poor schmuck who gets kicked around by the best? They most certainly would not! Alright, he agreed, …but just mother blades. Outstanding! she declared in a faux academic accent, and with the manliest voice she could muster. As they went forward to the work-out room, something in Tyler’s mind was trying to fathom why Gray would include it in the array of training weaponry. Shrugging, he thought to himself, The old guy must know what he’s doing."

The antique train aisle gave way to a spacious arena at the front, appropriately matted and surrounded by low pedestals from which each program originated. The shindie program was suspiciously placed near the center, and its pedestal was slightly elevated above the others. Vilia opened the glove-box sized cabinet on the far wall, and thumbed through the stack of gram cards. The program of choice was last in the pile and, oddly enough, was somewhat larger in both width and length than the others. Moving to the pedestal, she knelt down and inserted the card into the designated slot. Presumably, she intended to stand, unsheathe her weapon and wait for Marta the gram to commence. Unfortunately, she had no earthly idea of how well Test The Champions, Corp. had done its homework, and before she could stand, there came an explosive crack, as if a titanic spine had been snapped, and Vilia was ignominiously hurled halfway across the room, onto her back. She had not been hit in a specific location, but by a general wall of force that resounded with equal torque throughout her anatomy.